Listening to an Iranian official describe his region as “West Asia” got me wondering if the word “Middle East” is on the outs and why. I suspect Middle East is eurocentric for some reason, but West Asia also preserves Europe as a continent, which is Eurocentric in its own way because Europe is not a continent and never was. If we’re calling anything West Asia, it should be Spain and Portugal.
Asia is a most curious continent. It has a centre, a south, an east, a far east, and a south east.
It doesn’t have a north. It doesn’t have a west. It certainly has no northwest.
The north is called russia. The west and southwest are called the middle east.
The definition of a continent is geological. Geology is a science. By all rights, Europe is part of the Asian landmass. And that should be the end of the story. Culture and history shouldn’t play a part.
It would be like if biologists said, “We know dogs aren’t really human, but we love them so much we’re going to classify them as Homo fidelis anyway.”
It doesn’t make any sense.
ah ok, so you aren’t asking a question, you and your fuckboy @cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com are just there to push an agenda.
Meh. More like I don’t think I’m supposed to be calling it the Middle East without seeming like an imperialist and I don’t want to call it West Asia because I don’t like Europe being a continent, so I’m kinda stuck.
I’m also wondering how people interpret “Middle East”, because I’m sensitive to that shit, especially on a global website. Like I don’t want to be calling placed “third world” if that’s offensive to people in the developing world / global south / ???.
“Middle East” is what I’ve always known the region as, and it’s just a historical-cultural accident that, in my defense, makes just as much sense as separating Europe from Asia. So either we keep both ME and Europe, or we get rid of both, is my logic.
So do I have agenda? Sort of. But also just wondering what people’s thoughts are on the subject.
One of my recent posts here was, “What’s a very specific opinion you have phrased as a question?” in homage to that evergreen and annoying problem of push polling on question forums.